


The Adventures Of Some Time Traveling Archaeologists and their Bickering Boyfriend Sidekicks

by draconicPeacekeeper



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Abuse, Abusive Bro, Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Aradia having sappy thoughts about Sollux, Archaeology, Bickering Sidekick Boyfriends, Child Abuse, Dave having gay thoughts about Karkat, Everybody has powers (except for any trolls besides vriska and aradia), F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, POV Aradia Megido, POV Dave Strider, Prophetic Dreams, Self-indulgent shenanigans, They can jump from timeline to timeline and they can also jump from past to future, Time Travel, Time Traveling Archaeologists, alternate timelines that basically function as alternate universes in their own right, because that's inevitable, occasional bro-strider related angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 14:20:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11830515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draconicPeacekeeper/pseuds/draconicPeacekeeper
Summary: Your name is DAVE STRIDER. You are THIRTEEN YEARS OLD and have been having the SAME DREAM for MONTHS ON END.You have NO IDEA WHAT IT MEANS.This is a Davekat/Arasol fanfic in which they're time traveling archaeologists who jump around the timestream having adventures. I hope you enjoy it!





	1. Prologue

It’s dark. Dark to the left of you, dark to the right of you, dark in your eyes and your ears and in everywhere darkness can be. You don’t like it. What if somebody’s here, lurking in the darkness, ready to strike when you least expect it, when you won’t be able to see them coming?

 

The thought makes you afraid. You can’t be afraid. You were taught how to be strong by your brother, you can’t disappoint him. You won’t.

 

You’ve fallen into a fighting stance like you have several times before, sword out, eyes darting around the blackness, when you see a trickle of red in the distance. At first you think it’s blood, but as you watch, fixated on the color, it grows bigger and closer and nearer by the second.

 

When it’s only eight feet away, you can make out the form of a person draped in red cloth, some sort of rose-colored appendages furled out behind them. You can’t see any of the details. They’re strangely blurry, as if being shown on a screen that only has 360p.

 

“Dave,” they say, but their voice is so muffled you can barely hear them. “Dave! It’s time for you to wake up! _Wake up!_ ”

 

You jolt awake in bed, sweat glistening on your forehead. Your name is DAVE STRIDER. You are THIRTEEN YEARS OLD and have been having the SAME DREAM for MONTHS ON END.

 

You have NO IDEA WHAT IT MEANS.


	2. A Very Typical And Altogether Unremarkable Boy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> are you surprised that I actually updated this cause I sure am

Your name is DAVE STRIDER and TODAY is your best friend’s birthday.

 

You wake up at TEN O CLOCK IN THE MORNING like all normal people should, sitting up in your bed with a yawn and a stretch. You grab your shades from the nightstand beside you and pop them on before you can even blink.

 

Then you drag yourself out of bed with more willpower than was probably required, and spend several minutes deciding what to wear. After a bit of deliberation, you finally settle on an old record T-shirt and some fairly baggy jeans. The T-shirt is a bit worn down, but hey! In your humble opinion, you look good in everything.

 

After spending an inordinate amount of time on your hair, you carefully peek into the hallway in case your Bro left something to keep you alert. But there seems to be nothing there, so you slowy edge into the hall, still wary. Your Bro is, after all, the coolest person there is. Your sure he could surprise you if he wanted to.

 

But a quick glance around the house proves that he isn’t anywhere at all. You suppose he’s gone out again. Typical Bro. Always busy pulling whatever rad stunt he’s undoubtedly working on right now. Sooo cooooool.

 

You decide to take advantage of this and play some of your Bro’s old video games. Halfway through the first level you start to clip through the floor. You groan. Why do you even bother?

 

Your Pesterchum dings and you click on the message to find a flood of purple prose gracing your screen.

 

 **TT:** Strider.

 **TT:** Strider, I know you’re there.

 **TT:** You’re never anyplace else. It does say quite a lot about how desperate you are for attention.

 **TT:** Strider, answer me.

 **TT:** Dave. Dave, come on.

 **TT:** If you don’t answer me soon I’ll burst out the shameful nicknames.

 **TT:** And we wouldn’t want that, would we?

 **TG:** oh hold on a sec

 **TG:** youve been spamming my computer for like ten whole minutes and somehow im the desperate one

 **TG:** yeah real clever rose

 **TT:** Oh please.

 **TT:** There are absolutely no circumstances in which you’re NOT the desperate one.

 **TG:** christ i walked right into that didnt i

 **TT:** You always walk into these, what were they called, “burns”.

 **TG:** come on lalonde dont act like you dont know what burns are

 **TG:** you aint some little old lady knitting her way through life   
**TG:** stuck in some trashy superhero cartoon and yelling help help my cats stuck in the tree

 **TG** : also im being attacked by eldritch monstrosities from beyond the void but notsamatter

 **TG:** the cats obviously more important poor things probably scared to death

 **TG:** nah thats not you

 **TG:** youre more like the eldritch mostrosities than the little old lady

 **TT:** Thank you so much for those touching comments, Dave.

 **TG:** no prob

 **TT:** Regardless of what role I would play in such superhero cartoons, I was going to ask if you’d talked to John today.

 **TT:** With all your rambling about that bunny, I’d thought you’d be imploding from anticipation to see what he thought of it.

 **TG:** oh dont worry rose i am so gonna cave in on myself in excitement

 **TG:** i worked so hard on it but itll all be worth it to see little johnny light up in happiness

 **TG:** stars are gonna shoot out of his eyes rose

 **TG:** itll be awesome

 **TT:** I genuinely cannot tell how sarcastic you’re being.

 **TG:** eh

 **TG:** moderately so

 **TG:** anyway youre right and i should totally go message egbert

 **TG:** so i guess ill talk to you later or whatever

 **TT:** See you, Dave.

 

You run upstairs to grab the apple juice you’d found in your closet earlier today. You love apple juice. The way it tastes, it might as well be liquid of the gods. You take a sip and ohhhh yeah, that’s the good stuff. The delicious, juicy good stuff. How you love it so.

 

Your Pesterchum dings again, and this time when you go to check you find bright green in place of Rose’s purple.

 

 **GG:** hey dave!!!

 **GG:** how’s your day going?

 **GG:** been doing cool things?

 **TG:** you know it

 **TG:** my bros out rn so i got to play his rad games

 **TG:** its been nothing but coolness all day every day

 **GG:** hehe nice!!!

 **GG:** soo…

 **GG:** have you talked to john today?

 **TG:** no not yet

 **TG:** did chat a little with TT though

 **TG:** she kept nagging me to talk to him too

 **TG:** whatever lalonde

 **TG:** where does she keep all that nagging anyway

 **GG:** nobody will ever know.

 **TG:** haha yeah pretty much

 **GG:** but um on the subject of john.

 **GG:** you should really talk to him about his gift!

 **GG:** he likes it a lot dave!!! it was a pretty good present.

 **TG:** oh what did he tell you that

 **TG:** or did you just know that already with your creepy future sight

 **GG:** i dont have future sight dave!

 **GG** : or at least not any more than john and rose.

 **TG:** how cryptic and entirely unhelpful

 **TG:** whelp this has been a fun conversation but i gtg now

 **TG:** got games to play and comics to make

 **TG:** you know how it is

 **GG:** i sure do!!! bye coolkid!

 

You’re about to return to said games and comics when you hear the doorbell ring. You tiptoe downstairs warily. You don’t remember ordering pizza or anything, and none of your friends really live nearby. Whoever this is can’t be good.

 

You open the door to find a grinning figure draped in bright, bright red and wearing the biggest smile you’ve ever seen on a single person.

 

“Hi, Dave!” she says.

 

You close the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me??? being too lazy to bother trying to code pesterlogs????? maybe so


	3. Oh The Places You’ll Go (a rap by doctor seuss)

 You stare at the door in mild terror. There is a stranger on your doorstep. A stranger! What is going  _on?_

 

Upon further consideration, you deduce that this could be one of your Bro’s many antics. Some sort of test, perhaps, or maybe a kind of practical jape. Whatever it is, you’d like to think that you handled it rather well. You are the most stoic of all the coolkids. It is you.

 

You take a few minutes to breathe. You remember how, one time after a particularly vicious failure in strifing, you’d started panicking and panicking and panicking till you couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t even get your stupid heart to stop trying to beat itself right out of your chest. But Jade had been there to help calm you down, walking you through the steps like she’d done it a million times. In and out. In and out. In and out.

 

After a while, you feel calm enough to try thinking again. “Well,” you say to yourself. “That sure was something.”

 

“Yes, I suppose it was!” comes a voice from behind you.

 

You whirl around, one of your easily-breakable swords in your hand and eyes wide behind the shades. Standing there is the person who you’d seen on the doorstep, only know they’re right in front of you and _how did they get inside without your seeing?_

 

They laugh, a low, rumbling sound that sets your spine on edge. “Wow, pulling a sword on me already? That’s kinda rude, don’tcha think?”

 

You edge backwards, taking in the sight before you. The person has pale grey skin and wild black curls that tumble down to their feet like a waterfall. A pair of horns are growing out of their skull, colored various shades of orange and curling towards each other like those of a ram. Eyes with grey pupils and yellow sclera are framed by rust-red mascara, the same color as the lipstick spread evenly across this _someone_ ’s thick, grinning lips. They are dressed in a bright red robe and burgundy pants, some sort of satchel slung over one shoulder and resting on their hip. A scarlet-colored gear is settled in the middle of their chest, and semi-translucent wings furl out behind them. In the background you can see a thick, pitch-black snake’s tail thrashing around in excitement. Their ears, large and droopy like a sheepdog’s and pierced by two golden hoop earrings, flap up and down like leaves in the wind. Whoever they are, they don’t look human by any means.

 

“Who are you?” you ask, and then, because you can’t help it, “ _What_ are you?”

 

They chuckle again, like that isn’t a perfectly reasonable question to ask when some sort of demon breaks into your house. “My name,” she declares with a certain flourish, “is Aradia Megido! And as to what I am, well, that depends on what you’re asking. But the short version is that I am a young troll girl and the Maid of Time! I’ve been sent to bring you to Skaia.” You find her voice to be soft but cheery, a sort of calm enthusiasm rolling alongside it’s cadence.

 

“What in the world is a troll?” you say. “Who sent you and what exactly is ‘Skaia’? That’s such a stupid name, it sounds like an island from goddamn Pokemon or something equally dumb. And what do you mean by _Maid of Time_?”

 

She frowns, tilting her head to the side in contemplation. “You should know that already, shouldn’t you? Yes, I believe you should! That was in your brother’s agreement, no?”

 

Your shoulders stiffen a little in suspicion. “What agreement? The hell, do you know Bro? And why is it that every time you try to clarify any of this nonsense it only gets more and more confusing, to the point where I keep having to ask more and more useless questions? Would it kill you to just give me a straight answer for once?? Is that a mechanism built into your made-up species of gremlin or whatever? Do y’all just drop dead everytime somebody ask you for something?”

 

She ignores you as she thinks, forked tongue flicking up to lick her eyeball. “That’s strange. You should’ve learned all of this years ago! And I can’t just teach you now, there’s no way we’d have enough time! Not on the 13th, of all days.”  


She pulls a small phone out of her bag and taps the screen a couple times, biting her lip thoughtfully. You’re about to ask what in god’s name she’s doing before she tucks the phone back into the satchel and shoots you one of her grins. Honestly, at this point she should probably just have them trademarked. Creepy Red Lipstick-Stained Teeth On Full Display™. Yeah, that would sell like hotcakes.

  
“Alright, we’ll be leaving in about one minute or so!” she says, aggravatingly cheerful despite having done nothing useful in the two minutes this conversation has lasted. “Oh, and you might want to hold your breath!”   
  
Like the absolute genius you are, you open your mouth to ask her what that could possibly mean.

 

And so you are stupidly shocked when there’s a flash of neon green light and then sudden water. Water in your lungs and your eyes and your brain and your heart and it’s all waterwaterwaterwaterwaterwater, and you can’t think, can’t breathe because _holy christ you’re going to drown, you’re going to drown far away from home and you don’t even know what’s happening or where you are or who that goddamn ram-chick was-_

 

And then your arm is being pulled, pulled up out of the water and oh hey, so is the rest of your body and before you can comprehend what just happened you’re retching, coughing up puddles onto the warm warm sand on the beach.

 

“Wow!” exclaims a voice, and you find yourself staring at a pair of dark grey shoes with rust red soles. They look worn, like Aradia had been running around the entire planet in them. Your gaze trails up and your back straightens until you’re staring at her face once again. “That looked kinda painful! I’m sorry about the lack of a warning, by the way. I suppose Sollux doesn’t like wasting too much time on the teleportation.”

 

You don’t ask who Sollux is. You doubt she would tell you, anyway.

 

“Come on!” she says. “It’s time for your initiation.”

 

You shoot her a look, and she laughs. “I’ll explain on the way there.” She pulls you off the beach and whoa, what the hell?

 

The scene laid out before you looks like a child’s attempt at solving a jigsaw puzzle. Bits and pieces of scenery are scattered across the floor, which shifts randomly from being full off soft green grass to paved with stone. There’s a bright blue tree on one end, and a giant pink teapot on another. The sky fades between all the colors of the rainbow, looking like some sort of messed up version of a reverse sunset. Trolls and humans alike parade across the street, laughing and chatting like all of this is normal in any way. You guess it kind of is, for them.

 

Maybe this isn’t real, you think. Maybe this girl kidnapped you and force fed you some sort of insane drug. Maybe this is some ridiculous dream, and in the morning you’ll get up and Rose will psycho-analyse the whole thing. That would at least make _some_ kind of sense.

 

Aradia turns to you, and this time the smile on her face is proud instead of excited. “This is Skaia!” she says, hissing a bit on the S. “Sometimes people refer to it as the Dream Bubbles because of how it resembles a lucid dream!”

 

“You can say _that_ again.” you mutter.

 

Your name is DAVE STRIDER. You have a feeling it’s going to be a long day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am physically unable to write anything longer than three pages. just,, physically unable.


End file.
